Unpacking the Green Economy concept: A quantitative analysis of 140 definitions

Over the past ten years, the Green Economy (GE) concept has gained momentum in both academia and policy-making arenas, leading to international programs in diverse sectors and driving national agendas all over the world. The concept is however highly controversial, partly due to its theoretical blurriness. The aims of this article are to shed light on the conceptual ambiguities surrounding the GE and to clarify its distinctive components. More concretely, the paper aims at understanding what GE definitions have in common as a conceptual whole (that is, which key features do they share?), and what makes them different to each other. For these purposes, the present study relies on an extensive review of both academic and grey literatures. Such a review yielded 95 GE definitions, as well as 45 definitions of Green Growth (GG), which is often interchangeably used with the former. All the definitions were methodically translated into a coded format thanks to a conceptual framework inductively developed by the research team. They were subsequently analyzed through descriptive and inferential statistics, as well as network analysis. Results provide the basis for a common meta-understanding of the GE concept. Like Sustainable Development (SD), the GE is a multidimensional notion, whose focus is on the potential trade-offs and synergies between economic and environmental dimensions (without ignoring social issues). The results uncover several discourses underlying the GE narrative, such as “econocentric incrementalism”, “unlimited eco-efficiency” and “transformative GE”. The analysis outlines several key cleaving elements discriminating GE definitions, like the focus on either well-being or economic growth, or the consideration or not of environmental limits. Finally, GE definitions are put into a broader perspective according to their potential as theoretical backgrounds for handling the social-ecological challenges posed by the Anthropocene.

The shaping effects of innovation and technology: from micro business model evolution to macro environment sustainability

Qinli Lu

Innovation is a prerequisite guarantee for the development of a country in this new era. It is an important driver not just for corporate growth but also for national social and economic transformation. Considering the strategic supporting role of innovation in the modern economic system, this thesis approaches the shaping effects of innovation and technology mainly from two important micro and macro perspectives, business model evolution and national sustainable development. The first essay takes business model innovation (BMI) in China as an entry point to investigate how novel elements can shape business models. There is a widespread perception that Chinese companies, compared to their Western counterparts, are not good at creating novel products and services. But in the arenas of e-commerce and other digital businesses, Chinese companies have become highly successful. This has led some observers to hypothesize that while Chinese firms may not excel at developing new-to-the-world products and services, they may be good in inventing new-to-the-world business models. To explore this phenomenon, I analyzed 137 suggested innovative business models in detail to investigate new-to-the-world features, yielding an overview of BMI in China. Based on these cases, a theoretical framework was proposed to investigate how innovative features can prompt successful BMI. I summarize the reasons behind BMI in China. The second essay explores the support from open innovation (OI) for BMI based on literature review and some inspiration from the first essay. Theoretical underpinnings are often cited as a necessity to advance the research of BMI. The study proposes that the development of OI and BMI keeps pace within a dynamic innovation process. To develop a consistent body of knowledge about BMI and OI, this conceptual paper sheds light on the relationships between OI and BMI by providing a framework and discussing its implications. The main investigations are as follows: 1) Why OI has strong impacts on BM development; 2) How OI can shape BMs; 3) What support OI can provide for BMI. The third essay analyzes the shaping effects of technology on environmental issues by carrying out an empirical study of tracing the imbalance of carbon emissions embodied in trade. The technological differences among developing and developed nations are tremendous, which have kept having strong impacts not only on economic and societal development but also on environmental sustainability. Thus, this study provides a new and critical perspective to reconsider the imbalance of carbon emissions regionally and globally, revealing essential policy implications for region-specific sustainable development strategies. The thesis makes several important contributions. For micro business model evolution, the thesis develops a theoretical framework to show how the values are delivered in a business model system and how innovative features can further prompt successful business model innovations, as well as a comprehensive analysis of the theoretical underpinning from open innovation for business model advance. For macro environmental sustainability, the thesis presents a comprehensive spatio-temporal analysis of carbon emissions embodied in trades of nations within and beyond BRI, contributing to methodological advances of measuring the impacts of technological differences on carbon footprints and emissions leakage, which is largely underexplored in current studies.

EPFL2020

Methodology for the identification of promising integrated biorefineries

Ayse Dilan Celebi

Steady increase in global energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and depletion of fossil energy resources, together with increased attention towards sustainable development has prompted researchers to discover economical and environmentally competitive non-petroleum alternatives and biomass is considered to be one of the most promising renewable sources of energy and carbon of this matter to address the aforementioned issues within a biorefinery platform. A biorefinery is an integrated processing facility that converts biomass into transportation fuels, value-added chemicals, heat, and electricity via biochemical and thermochemical conversion routes. Integrated biorefineries are capable of mimicking petroleum refineries via application of advanced process synthesis methods including modeling, simulation, integration and optimization techniques. This thesis presents a comprehensive synthesis methodology for the integration of bioprocessing technologies in biorefineries by addressing techno-economic and environmental sustainability analysis. The proposed systematic design approach combines advanced process modeling approaches, process integration techniques, and multi-objective optimization algorithms to assess the performance of the overall system with respect to economic, environmental, and energetic indicators. The design strategy is applied based on different case studies. Results indicate that multi-product processes can yield significant cost and environmental benefits. Additionally, the integration of biochemical and catalytic processes with thermochemical conversion pathways results in increased carbon efficiency and economic and environmental competitiveness. Synergies between biorefineries and energy system are assessed by integrating industrial plants with a cogeneration system producing biofuels and process heat. In doing so, system efficiency is increased by coupling the proposed cogeneration system with carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) and power-to-gas technologies to store the renewable intermittent electricity in the form of biofuels. The results exhibit that through system expansion, integrated biorefinery systems allow us to imitate fossil refineries with a large spectrum of bio-based products. This further increases the resource efficiency while offering a promising solution to mitigate CO2 emissions and hence reaching the longer-term decarbonization target set by the Paris Agreement.

EPFL2019

The shaping effects of innovation and technology: from micro business model evolution to macro environment sustainability

Qinli Lu

EPFL2020

Methodology for the identification of promising integrated biorefineries

Ayse Dilan Celebi

EPFL2019